Okay, time to make my update, I've been fighting a bit of exhau -
OH MY DAYS IT'S BEEN SIX DAYS SINCE I UPDATED?!
Sorry! The past few days were a blur of work!
Seems most of y'all are in favor of making an actual arc out of the Academy training montage. Your wish, by majority vote, is my command.
The Academy Arc will have six more chapters, each covering two months of training and learning. To compensate for the size of the coverage, the chapter length will be increased, pacing picks up a bit, and updates will be slowed to every two-four days maximum since I got a day job and I can't write from there.
Meanwhile, have this, have at thee.
Fair warning, the timeline's gonna jump a bit all over the place. For this one, I'm mostly doing January, then summing up February since the month is essentially him doing the same thing to the point of near-mastery, then he'll move on and add to his plate on the coming months.
Enjoy!
Chapter Four
Pain and Gain
The kunai.
It was the quintessential tool of the shinobi, though perhaps not as iconic as the shuriken. Once a gardening tool, it quickly became popular among assassins for its balance, ease of crafting and maintenance, not to mention how effectively it killed. One to the brain did just as well as any bullet back in my old world, though perhaps not as gory as, say, a 44 or a .50 Cal unless Elemental manipulation got involved.
This was one tool I had to master. This was going to be one of the basic practicals of being a shinobi that I absolutely intended to master by the end of the year.
By master, I meant 'Itachi-style deflection' master. I would do that shit every day. The enemies I would have to face would ask for no less.
I hefted one, feeling its balance and readying myself to throw it. A shift of the feet, switching to the throwing grip Minato knew... and I focused my chakra onto my right arm, simultaneously rolling it on my torso to support any recoil from the enhanced throw. It wasn't easy, and it took me a couple of seconds to concentrate on getting down pat and making sure the flow stayed in place, but I got it.
Then I threw the knife.
It launched off fast, significantly faster than the last time, and it hit the target, the blade sinking in nearly to the hilt. No bullseye - four notches off. Any discomfort from the recoil of my throw was momentary, a result of the movement, and negligible, as expected.
So that's how they do it.
I grinned.
Very good.
I readied another, channeling my chakra to my other arm, and threw it again. Six notches off. Not good.
Left arm's worse. Practise with both, focus on left.
I readied another. Left, seven off. Tch. Right, three off. Left, six off. Right, two off. Left, seven off. C'mon. Right, three off.
I stopped, seeing the need to force myself to calm down. No point in getting agitated. Chakra worked at its most efficient when the user was calm. Callaté. Calma. Calm. Flowing river, waterfall, breeze on the field, surprisingly satisfying efficient work videos. Calm.
I breathed in, and out. Right hand readied, I threw the next kunai. Just off the bullseye, so close. Left? Five off. Not good, but better than the last time.
I took out two, throwing them one after another with an uncontrollable, irrational spasm of anger, one thud after another on the target. Nine off on right, six off on right.
"What the hell?" I hissed at myself. "Calm down, dumbass."
I breathed in, counted to five, breathed out, breathed in again while counting to five, held for four, and released through four. I repeated the exercise, and while the frown hadn't gone away, the red-hot anger had.
"Anger can be a weapon," Kratos's words echoed in my head, "if you control it - use it."
"Should your anger be too much to contain," a version of Hashirama once told his brother, "then you must make sure that your anger be three things:
"Your rage must be cold."
"Your rage must be reasoned."
"And your rage must be legendary."
Right. So not a moment more of that bullshit.
I breathed again, hopefully ridding myself of any remaining vestiges of my anger - in my current situation, it simply would not help - and I readied another kunai -
"Uh-uh," a feminine voice cut in, attracting my attention, and I did a double-take when I realized it was Tenten - the one and only Tenten - and she was talking to me. "Uh-uh. Nope. No. Please. I am literally - please do not throw another kunai or I will strangle you and myself. Your hands are in need of an exorcism. I need a priest to help me recover from watching this ungodly insult to the art of Bukijutsu. I can feel the kunai in your hand screaming in fear that you'll do to it what you've done to its brothers and sisters."
"Uh..."
"This is a sad sight, alright?" she approached me with a pitying gaze. "I-I-I honestly just came here to let you know that Hagane-sensei wanted me to let you know that you, uh, missed detention, and while I really don't want to get in trouble with her, she's really scary sometimes..." she cut herself off, working herself up (or trying to calm down from working herself up? It was really hard to tell, and she was talking fucking fast). "Can I say it?"
"Say...?"
"I'm gonna take that as permission, I'm gonna say it: You are awful at this." She quieted to let those words sink in, and then ranted over anything I could say when I opened my mouth to respond. "You don't just suck - you could miss the Hokage monument if the literal freakin' Third Tsuchikage flew you five feet close to it. You couldn't catch a cold with those hands. If it wasn't for the fact that you need this to pass or, y'know, approach anything close to your average decent shinobi, I would tell you to quit throwing kunai and just use them for gardening. I honestly cannot allow you to leave before we've had five minutes where I at least make sure you're going somewhere on the path towards being below average today, and that'll be an upgrade."
"... Can I talk?"
"As long as you don't tell me it's not that bad, in which case boy I will bitch-slap you with the blunt end of my kunai." To underline her threat, she produced a fucking tri-pronged kunai with the flick of her wrist.
Where...?
"It's that bad?" I winced.
"The first Shinobi War was that bad," she snorted. "The Second was worse. The Third was a shitshow until we stepped in and won that shit. This? If any ninja worth their salt could see the way you throw kunai they wouldn't start the Fourth Shinobi War, they'd just try to do something massively stupid, like, uh, collecting all the Bijuu to fuse them into one absolutely massive beast of a Bijuu-zord so they can place the entire world under a permanent genjutsu for the specific purpose of making sure anything and everything that ever existed forgets any of, uh - how long did this take you, five minutes? - make everybody forget that the past five minutes existed. It's a miracle that all your kunai actually hit anything. They barely even hit the air, for Kami's sake."
"Do you have any tips?" I asked, if at least to get her to stop freakin' roasting me. I get it, Jesus Christ, I suck. You're beating a dead horse.
"Yes," the future weapons mistress answered flatly. "Simple enough. First of all, STOP FLICKING YOUR WRIST LIKE THAT, THAT'S WHY YOUR AIM KEEPS GOING OFF ALL THOSE NOTCHES!"
"How would you do it?"
In lieu of answering, she threw her kunai at the target, her eyes fixed on me the whole time. I saw and heard the difference, a faint whistle ringing through the air as it traveled so fast I could only watch the moment it hit the target. It hit the bullseye.
She did a fucking no-look bullseye.
Jesus, no wonder she'd end up on Gai's team.
"Okay, that's badass," I told her.
She gave me a small, cocky smirk, waving me off. "Well, it's nothing special, I think this is the baseline of what any ninja could do - I'm gonna do a lot bigger and better than this someday. But you saw how I did it, right? You want to put a little more of your arm into the flick, I find that it gives you more power. Like this." She slowly threw her arm out, flicking her wrist a bit differently from how I did it. Her was stronger, straighter, and involved the arm more than my throw. Mine worked, but only at a basic level.
"Try it," she told me.
I took another kunai out of my pouch, tossing and hefting it for the weight, and recalled her grip and imitated it.
Then I threw it the way she did. Straight-arm, strong flick.
Thnk. Edge of the bullseye. Literally straddled the line between the first notch and the bullseye.
"Nice!" she nodded. "That's better. Your grip was a little off, but the throw was much straighter this time. If you practise this every day, given maybe two weeks throwing, you can start doing it in your sleep. That's when you can start doing the more advanced stuff and try throwing it in different positions, throw it while you're moving, and try throwing it while you and the target are moving! You won't ever be as good as I am, but you definitely won't end the world by accidentally killing your own comrades."
"Thanks, Tenten-san," I smiled gratefully.
"You're welcome! Okay, now show me how you throw your shuriken..."
I switched pouches, extracted a shuriken, aimed, and threw.
Two notches off.
"Your other hand?"
Four notches off.
Tenten facepalmed; I rubbed the back of my head sheepishly. "Oh, Kami, looks like we need to work on that, too..."
We may or may not have forgotten that Tenten came to me for a reason. Even despite that she felt guilty about forgetting, she didn't let me leave until she was satisfied that I had a good foundation to work with.
Hagane-sensei was not happy.
She assigned TWICE the work on me despite how ridiculously difficult it was.
I was crying the entire time.
Hagane-Sensei was a bitching bitch.
"From tomorrow," she told me at my first detention four days ago, "you will commit to an exercise routine I built for you. You will do three hundred pull-ups and three hundred and fifty push-ups. Every single day, twice a day. That will be your baseline, and you will go up from there and do two hundred alternating crunches and sit-ups on top of you run and other various exercises I will assign to you. Then two weeks later, you will increase each set by one hundred each."
My eye twitched. "Is that even humanly possible?!"
"I do eight hundred of each a day, and I don't whine like you do."
"You're a freakin' adult! I have baby noodle arms compared to you!"
"So did Kakashi Hatake and Itachi Uchiha, and they were Jounin."
I gaped. She's holding me up to the standards of those monsters?!
"Well," she gave me an amused look, "I see you've advanced beyond asking what would happen if you didn't do these exercises. I think I'll leave it to your imagination."
The last part she said with a glint in her eyes so unholy that I leaned back in fright despite that she was practising excellent social distancing.
"Today, you'll start with a nice and easy two hundred on both alt-sets..."
And that was how my life was at the moment. Pure grinding.
Lee found me out on day two because Hana sent him my way when she had other shit to do during my detention, and he could only bear to watch for all of eight seconds before he joined me and blew past my set in one hundred seconds - and this dude hadn't even touched a minute of Gai's training yet. Shit almost made me cry anime tears.
"Three fifty-two... two ninety...three... three fifty-three... two ninety-foooour..."
I pushed myself up, got on my feet as fast as I could, jumped onto the hangbar over my head, and forced my arms to work my body up the bar.
Simultaneous sets of alternating push-ups and pull-ups, going well over one hundred beyond what Minato was used to (200)? Yup, that was one way to get it done. Woman was a taskmaster and had no fucks to give about a poor boy's growing body.
She also did not like the fact that I missed about half my detention the previous day. Didn't even put the blame on Tenten despite the fact that she was the biggest reason I got even more sidetracked.
On the bright side, at least my throwing technique had a foundation to get substantially better than before.
"Keep... going... Minato-kun!" Lee encouraged, doing his own set - he was supposed to watch over me, but he decided to join in the routine alongside me instead. I honestly lost count on his part, and he wasn't counting. I could tell he was feeling the burn, too - he was coated in a sheen of sweat. "You're almost there! Let's push ourselves to the limits!"
"Almost... there..." I grunted, letting myself drop down so I could push up again. "Three fif-ty... six..."
Up, up! I leapt and grabbed the bar, if only just.
"Two... ninety-seven..."
Back down, push-up.
"Three fi..fifty-seven... Two ninety-eig...eight... three fift-eight...two... ninety-nnn! Three fift-nnnn! Three hundred... three-SIXTY!"
I grunted as I fell on the ground, and forced myself to get up into a sitting position after letting myself catch 3% of my breath.
"Recovery time?" I checked with Lee, who was almost done, then dropped onto his bum too when he was.
"Ano..." he thought about it, "I think... thirty seconds?"
"Good enough for me." I panted.
"Here." Lee tossed me a bottle of water.
"Thanks, Lee-san." I took a long draft from the water bottle, letting out a relieved sigh when the cool liquid did my body some huge favor.
"Your renewed passion is amazing to see these days, Minato-kun," Lee complimented. "I've never seen you so motivated in all the years we've been here."
"Yeah, well, sometimes we just need a kick in the butt to get us moving."
Lee nodded at that, and we fell into a short silence.
"Did... Do you know that I... found myself disliking you, sometimes?" Lee asked, out of nowhere.
My eyes widened and I turned to the thick-browed kid. "Wow, really?"
He raised his hands. "N-no, don't get me wrong, it was never anything big! I just... I just really didn't like seeing how you squandered your potential, see? I, uh... how do I explain this?"
"No, I get it." I nodded. "I get it."
On a purely physical level, there were five civilian-born or orphans that were a decent clip ahead of everyone else barring the clan-born. Tenten, Rock Lee, Heihachi Takane, Jin Yuki (no apparent relation to Haku), and myself. I was in the last cat of that particular branch, pretty much in the same way that Tottenham Hotspurs was the weakest of the 'Big Six' of the Premier League, but even then, Minato had a reasonably strong body, not very good taijutsu but still some good physical prowess for an orphan. Perhaps one of my parents was a ninja, but thanks to Obito, I'd never know.
(Insert obligatory fuck-Obito message.)
Either way, I could see what Lee was getting at. Minato was really middle-of-the-road as far as his skill went. Average theory, average taijutsu, average ninjutsu before I came in, average bukijutsu, average everything. From what I was deducing with each day passing, a lot of people held some disdain for Minato because he had some notable potential, but until I came into his body, he followed up on - and yeah, you could guess how much here, right?
Yeah, that's right, he achieved pretty much fuck-all on it. No matter how much each teacher poked and prodded at him, he was passive-aggressive and just did enough to technically satisfy, and always stayed out of trouble. Just a nonentity. Middle of the pack. One face among thousands. That after, according to what I'd seen of his old report cards, coming within a hair of top five on the second year, after which he dropped off sharply to the middle, where he'd stayed to this day against all odds.
Honestly, looking at it that way, it was little wonder that Hagane-sensei gleefully latched onto the power detention gave her to push me and gave me as much work to do as I had. Honestly, though, I had no idea why they didn't just manipulate Minato into excelling anyway, but perhaps it was a peacetime thing.
I mean, look at Shikamaru Nara. He was the freakin' son of the Clan Head, but he slacked off in class like there was no tomorrow and no point in passing. Sure, it worked out for him, he became the Hokage's Shadow, married Temari, and had a smart cookie for a kid.
That, or they didn't think he was worth the trouble.
"I get it," I nodded. "Slacked off for almost two years, wasting my life with advantages you didn't have. I had a shot at top five once, but look at me now. Yeah." I nodded again. "Yeah, I really do get it. I just... I just woke up one day and realized... if I fail, well, I'm screwed. I'm a civvie orphan, and I'd have to go back to civilian school and catch up to four years of material before I could get anywhere in life." I shook my head. "I told myself, nah. I'm not going out like that. So I decided to push as hard as I could and at least get somewhere within somewhere at the end of the year. And I'll get there, even if I have to work myself to death."
"Yosh!" Lee grinned, leaping to his feet and offering me a hand. "Let's work hard, Minato-kun!"
I grinned, taking his hand and getting up. "Heck yeah, let's do this."
Later that night, I went home with a bag of leaves, utterly exhausted on a physical level but still determined to get some training in before I went to sleep.
I stuck two leaves on my forehead, adhering them there with my chakra, then I ran through each of the Twelve Zodiac Hand Seals without trying to knead chakra through my body to enact any sort of jutsu into being. Ram. Rat. Tiger. Snake. Horse. Monkey. Boar. Bird. Ox. Dog. Hare. Dragon.
I went over them again. Ram. Rat. Tiger. Snake. Horse. Monkey. Boar. Bird. Ox. Dog. Hare. Dragon.
Again.
Again, faster. I fucked up at Bird, muscle memory conflicting between the way Minato did it and the way I did it.
I shook my head. I was better off building muscle memory than trying to fuck it up by going too fast, I told myself. Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast. Fast is deadly.
I went through them again, in a different order. Snake. Boar. Monkey. Rat. Dragon. Bird. Tiger. Horse. Ram. Ox. Hare. Dog.
Dog. Hare. Dragon. Snake. Ram. Monkey. Ram. Ox. Horse. Boar. Rat. Bird.
I paused, letting the leaves drop off my head - a random thought came into my head. I remembered a specific result coming as a consequence of a specific action I watched once and researched and practiced thousands of times when I was young, an action done by a seven-year-old. I impulsively reenacted it, gathering and focusing chakra around my lungs, inhaling deeply as I created a chain of six specific hand seals.
Snake. Ram. Monkey. Boar. Horse. Tiger.
A great warmth built up in my lungs, and I felt my chakra swirl and flow with each seal, molding and building power with the direction of each hand seal. An apotheosis of raw, scorching, majestic power populated itself within my pulmonary system, and all I had to do was let it out. And now...!
[Katon: Gōkakyū no Jutsu!]
I exhaled...!
Smoke.
Then I coughed. I hacked and coughed as if I'd accidentally inhaled cigar smoke, my lungs protesting my every moment of existence. My coughing fit was so severe I could scarcely mount the concentration to put up the necessary hand seal - Ram - and disrupt my chakra, dissipating the focused chakra in my lungs and restoring normal flow. The tight discomfort went away almost instantaneously, and I purged my lungs once more.
Okay. I coughed. Maybe we should walk before we can run. Don't fucking do that again. Not to mention, I think I didn't quite put enough chakra in that, anyway. And imagine trying that fucking jutsu in your own living fucking room. The utter fucking bollocks on you, you incipient moron! Fucking lucky you didn't kill myself doing that, yanno!
Five minutes of a hoarse voice and smaller, lingering coughs later, I checked everything out. I hadn't felt any actual pain, only severe discomfort that went away those minutes later. Running chakra through my lung area revealed no form of pain. It was possible that I hadn't been hurt by the accidental case of what might have been smoke or concentrated pseudo-fire chakra.
I decided to start with the basics.
Tomorrow, I resolved, I'd have to bite into my stipends, get a mirror. Full-body.
I would start with Henge. And I would study the shit out of every seal.
First, though, I sat in seiza, keeping two leaves on my head.
I called my chakra seallessly and it came out, and I put my hand in the ram seal - The Seal of Focus. I wanted to study how it moved through my body. I wanted to know it; to know how it flowed through my body, to know every last one of the 361 tenketsu in my body. I wanted to feel everything; for how would I gain control over my chakra if I did not make the effort to study it?
It was certainly an interesting experience. It was like being perfectly aware of every flowing liquid inside one's body, and somehow able to manipulate it somewhat with the power of sheer will and physical movement. Being that chakra was made of a combination of physical and spiritual energy, it needed focus and movement in order to bring out its maximum potential and efficiency. A focused, calm mind sharpened the quality of one's chakra, and well-formed hand seals helped mold the chakra to its best form and wasted less chakra as a result.
Of course, it was entirely possible to use one hand or none to achieve the same effect with one's chakra. Such was a sign of an incredibly focused, incredibly powerful or skilled ninja at work. If not the former due to my circumstances, I absolutely aimed to be the latter.
To walk that path, I needed perfect chakra control, that not a modicum of any chakra I used would come to waste, so I could last much longer than I had any right to in any battle. To achieve perfect chakra control, I had to understand how my chakra worked. To understand how my chakra worked, I needed to study, to hone my mind, and to exercise extensively, to hone my body.
I walked up to Hagane-sensei, a day after my failed Fireball, and willingly, knowingly asked her to push the motherfuck out of me in every way possible, every single day in which I was not to rest. We came to a simple arrangement.
"I can't do that after the two-week deficit is over, Yakushi," she told me, giving me a meaningful tilt of her head. "I have to give all my students time within normal class periods as much as I would have to give you time in order to do that. Anything I could show you to do, you would have to do during class and during your own time. You also understand that any extra lessons I would give you could only be done with black marks on your record."
I nodded, understanding the assignment perfectly. "Fuck you, Hagane."
Her eyebrows went up for a second at my unhesitant acceptation/insult. "Not what I would've gone with, but very well. You have seven weeks of detention, Yakushi."
"Understood, Sensei."
With that, extra lessons were secured.
To understand how my chakra worked, I needed to understand the appropriate movement and flow - the flow of my chakra when I wasn't using it, the flow of my chakra when I was, and the flow of my chakra when I was activating any technique. To understand that, I needed to understand and master hand seals.
That would be my first step, and it was certainly a very interesting first step.
Over the course of two weeks, among everything else I did, I gathered watered-down notes from Second Year theory, combining what they taught us and what little content the Academy Library (and Hagane-sensei) offered on that particular subject with what I'd known from my exhaustive study of Naruto lore in order to put together a theoretical, somewhat incomplete but interesting picture of how the basic Twelve Seals worked.
Ram - the Seal of Focus and the premier seal of chakra molding - made my chakra much more distinct to my proprioception and thus easier to manipulate and direct its flow, with subsequent seals resulting in different effects. Manipulation would include a wide variety of effects, from simply calling the chakra out, to disrupting chakra flow to break genjutsu, to detonating explosive tags or Deidara's clay bombs.
Tiger 'rubbed' the chakra together, so to speak, creating a frictional force where the user gathered any chakra, from which a chain could build a Katon or Doton technique or refine it to its final form, as in the case of Gōkakyū, where the first Tiger seal converted the chakra into a more flammable version in the lungs, and the second refined the entire mold and readied the technique.
(That was where I'd failed; I hadn't built up enough chakra to convert it properly into Katon (it was C-Rank for a reason), hence the smoke, which, other than the thankfully brief 'smoke' in my lungs, seemed to have done no damage due to how little there was. It remained converted chakra, but the moment it exited my body was when it would - or should've - turned into actual fire, hence why it was a simple matter to dispel it by using Chakra Disruption/Genjutsu Release.)
Dragon or Bird 'compressed' the chakra, and moving on to the next chain would either compress the air in the user's lungs, or adapt the chakra to be more malleable when expelled from the body in order to affect the atmosphere much more effectively.
Snake compressed and spooled the chakra, creating multiple nodes and points in which to create a faux-circuit, or a board of layered, hardening chakra, a foundation on which other seals would build the effect the user wanted in order to achieve a Doton or Raiton technique. It was possibly a relatively simple seal to cut for Raiton, since most Raiton techniques I'd seen did not need the Snake seal, but the understanding of how it worked to create those effects through endless practice. The Chidori was one such example, where a novice user would need a chain of three hand seals - Ox, Hare, and Monkey - but the full chain, theoretically, for anyone unused to converting chakra to Lightning Nature without needing a seal, would be Ram, Snake, Ox, Hare, and Monkey.
Ox, Monkey, Boar, Horse and Hare were Seals of Refinement, each achieving the same result in different ways that had different effects.
Horse layered and 'widened' the chakra, somewhat more so than Snake, and in a way that was better suited to all elemental and non-elemental jutsu than Snake, which gave more power to any technique - it was that specific seal that put the 'Grand' in Grand Fireball.
Monkey accelerated and smoothed the flow of chakra, additionally easing the internal effects of converted chakra to the point where it wouldn't damage the body in any way at all. Ox also did something similar, with its effects much better used on more exotic techniques, like internally generated Katon, Raiton, Fūton, and Doton chakra, as well as medical chakra, though that likely depended on the user since I'd only ever seen Ox used once on the Mystical Palm.
Hare concentrated converted chakra, increasing its quality that it might match the likes of C-Rank and above Jutsu.
Boar hardened concentrated chakra even further, and was an excellent way to refine converted chakra to bring the maximum amount of quality out of the chakra mold, akin to metal handled by a master smith.
Dog was a Suiton conversion seal, and in addition also smoothed the flow of chakra and refined it, like a combined equivalent of Ox and Boar. The immense, waterlike quality of its refinement also likely served well on some seriously exotic techniques where Fūinjutsu also played a part, like the Summoning technique - in which the seals were Boar, Dog, Bird, Monkey and Ram, in addition to calling forth a complex Seal formula and a blood sacrifice to facilitate the severance of spacetime to create a spatial shortcut for the summoned object or animal to travel through.
(Fūinjutsu would not be my forte, especially not spacetime fūinjutsu. I had a headache trying to figure out how the flying fuck those seals broke the laws of astrophysics and did things that could only be thoroughly and successfully replicated and objectively studied by a late-stage Type II and III+ civilization. There was a reason the likes of Minato Namikaze, Tobirama Senju, Jiraiya, Kushina, Mito and by extension the entire Uzumaki clan were so feared. They had minds I did not for that kind of shit. Whether Naruto, too, did... well. That was something I'd have to try to find out sometime.)
Rat was not quite universally understood, though it was noted that it was a preferred hand seal for the Nara's Shadow Hijutsu and, interestingly, quite a few genjutsu. A niggling theory I had in my mind was that it had something to do with the Yin/Mental side of the jutsu, though I did wonder what its Yang equivalent was. Boar, perhaps? Or Snake?
(It did explain why the Nara were so lazy, though, and why their Shadow jutsu were usually so weak. Their chakra balance was more than likely heavily attuned towards Yin Release, which gave them much more mental prowess (though in a different direction than, say, the Yamanaka), but at the cost of their physical abilities. There was something they would have to work on in order to make their Yang balance on their shadow jutsu stand out more and have more and real physical effects, such as pretty much everything anyone had seen Shadow techniques do in various other media, like that Shikamaru lookalike (who also used Shadow techniques!) from Fairy Tail. Though, honestly, the Nara knew their own jutsu better than I did, and I didn't want to risk any troublesome shit if I tried coming to them with my theories, varying from dismissive laughter to outright hostility. Noooo, thank you.)
I wouldn't know, but I was determined to and working on thoroughly studying the effect of each seal on the way I molded, so that I could replicate it without needing to use all the seals. It would be a long, difficult road, but one I was perfectly willing to undertake. The best way to do that would be through thorough, intrinsic understanding of my chakra.
Tobirama had done it, after all; how else could he take a 44-seal jutsu and cut all that shit down to only four hand seals?
If he could - and no, he didn't have Ōtsutsuki bullshit backing him up as much as it did his brother - then so could I.
I may not be a Genius, but I was an Out of Context Problem.
I would succeed.
My first feat on that end would be the Academy Three, and I was sure to do at least the Henge at the end of February, at the very least.
January was a demanding month.
On top of a ridiculous amount of theory practice, physical exercise and Bukijutsu practice, every single day consisted of consistent, constant, ceaseless practice to master my Twelve Basic Hand Seals, that I might call on many and any, in any order. I studied the effect of each seal, trying to imitate its exact effects with chakra control alone, but I wasn't making great progress - I determined that it was because I didn't have the level required for it yet, so I'd have to start tree walking, perhaps around February if not the end of it.
My path to perfecting chakra control took me towards extensive practice of basic Leaf Concentration over two weeks, sticking leaves on my head and various parts of my body. I could stick seven leaves on almost any part of my body without resorting to focusing my chakra with the Ram seal, though any further and I had to. I was working on that.
The second stage to Leaf Concentration, created by me, was Item Concentration, where any random object had to be stuck anywhere on the body with chakra.
Paper was the easiest, steel and my eraser the hardest. Two further weeks to do other tasks while using the Concentration exercises. Concentration while running, Concentration while going through taijutsu kata, Concentration while writing, Concentration while resting my body on my bed.
But it was not good enough. It was only the beginning.
With the end of January came the first Aptitude Test - once every single month, there would be one of them, to gauge the student's progress and show them where they needed work. In addition, every four months, there would be a Main Exam, each with significantly important results and that would affect whether a student would pass or not.
Knowledge, the written test. Ninjutsu, the three graduate D-Rank ninjutsu. Taijutsu, where you were pitted against one classmate and your aptitude on the level of your peer tested.
I failed the first Aptitude Test. Passed knowledge at 71% - so, not very good - failed the rest.
My Henge - I Henged into Rock Lee, with whom I'd spent the most time - was good, with some small details off. The edge of his collar and sleeves was a dark navy, not black. My Kawarimi and Bunshin were okay, but not good enough to take to the field, and my opponent was Jin Yuki.
"Lazy Minato," he drawled as we made the Seal of Confrontation, "how will you do this time?"
Hana bade us to fight, and I decided to let Jin have the initiative, settling into a ready stance. I studied his body as best as I could, avoiding eye contact, and waited, letting him come to me. He seemed to be of the same mind, holding the starting stance in a mirror of mine. I pretended to relax just a hair, and he perked up, seeing opportunity, and charged in. He started with a high jab at my face, where I closed up and deflected, then blocked his other punch. He reared back and made to grab at my hand to initiate a grapple; I pulled away and hopped back, letting him miss that and his subsequent low kick at my shins. He grinned, seeing some opportunity in my pullaways, and leapt in for a leaping hook kick. Odd choice, I thought, sidestepping to my right and giving me brief access to his back. I moved in as soon as he landed, and jabbed powerfully at his liver. He grunted and froze, then I swept his feet out under him.
Liver punch, people. Always try the liver punch. Always works.
With that, I won the encounter, as I'd been deemed in the perfect position to end him.
My overall grade was 63%, due to my average marks at Ninjutsu - and 70% was considered the passing mark.
"Unacceptable," Hana-sensei commented with a disappointed shake of her head. "Study, Yakushi. Improve yourself! Everything I've given you is more than enough!"
"What do I need to work on?" I asked.
She sighed, and recalled the way I did everything. "Your taijutsu still needs work, so keep practicing. Your ninjutsu is the most important grade; if you cannot master such basic jutsu, according to the syllabus, you will not be a good ninja. You're already halfway through, so it's only a matter of training - do that every day. Your physical prowess is increasing, keep that up. It's only a matter of time and commitment - do that. You understand?"
"I understand, sensei."
"I expect you to pass your Ninjutsu, if not by February, then by March. If you cannot pass even then, our arrangement ends and your chances of failure in the First Exam will be even higher. Do you understand?"
"Yes, sensei. I won't disappoint you."
"You will on February. But do not the month after."
It took me nine weeks from January to catch up to four years of ninja theory, history and tactics (because I wasn't lucky enough to inherit all the memories and skills of Minato Yakushi, lucky fucking me). It took me three weeks to acclimate myself to my exercise, where I pushed myself to the point of exhaustion every day except Sunday, and the Academy Nurse healed the microtears in my muscles with Healing Pulse. I hadn't show much in the way of results yet - though perhaps that was because I was comparing myself to the best, and they outclassed me by a massive margin since they were putting as much effort into their work as I was.
I exercised every single day, kunai and shuriken throwing under Leaf Concentration, non-contact Taijutsu spars with Lee under Leaf Concentration (which we found out he could do, too), Hand Seal practice to the point of exhaustion, and honing my ability with the Academy Three.
February, I failed the second Aptitude Test. Knowledge, ninjutsu, taijutsu. Knowledge, 79%, everything else, fail. Overall grade, 69%, good Henge, workable Bunshin, but ultimately let down by the Kawarimi and being matched up with Neji Hyūga, who pretty much beat me near to a bruised pile of flesh, even if I gave him five seconds of a fight compared to the last time. The examiners had no fucks to give - they wanted nothing more than a perfect score in practical Ninjutsu, and only getting two-thirds of it somewhat right was a massive black mark on my exam.
Hana had no words, only some measure of contempt and that whole I-told-you-so vibe.
I had no words, only anger.
I was becoming better with each passing day. But it was not good enough.
I had to work much, much harder.
So fuck it, I decided, I'm gonna start Tree Walking proper. And I'm gonna tree walk the shit out of it.
A/N:
Next chapter this Thursday.
Hit the reviews, let me know what you think.
Later!
